Story telling in the age of twitter

I have been thinking about how we tell stories as I have some client work to do around building a narrative. We assume that the framework for story telling has stayed the same, the way it has been forever. A beginning, a middle, an end. A sense of drama, something that must be overcome and the climatic solution, the happy or unhappy resolution.
I am wondering about this. At the Gates Foundation, we did some research that said that people want to hear that investing in aid or charity works. They don’t want to hear about all the poverty and sickness. So how do you tell that story, without telling the sad part first. It defies our sense of normal story telling.
Then there is the impact of new news slipping into the narrative all the time. Imagine that you are telling a story about something that happened to you yesterday. Along the way, someone interrupts with something related, and then someone else chimes in with something completely random. That is the media environment today–our narrative’s disrupted by incoming twitters or interruptions of some sort, forever altering the storyline.
And who owns a story?  My friend, Rick Smolen of Day in the Life fame, is producing a book that is an Obama time capsule.  I say producing because it is a book that anyone can add to, customize with their own art, impressions, etc.  Each participant owns their own story.  And the collective involvement in this project becomes the story of Obama that we all participate in.

What I am most excited by is this sense that we are all writing and telling stories, each of us adding to other’s narrative.  It is messy, but it is collaborative.  Like the old phone game, a story is always enhanced as it gets passed along.

Vanity Fares Poorly in the Recession

My July issue of Vanity Fair arrived yesterday.  I love Vanity Fair for its smart, interesting profiles, gorgeous photography and for the pages and pages of lush advertising.  It is always like a trip to Europe first class.  Something was different this time.  There was the irreverant, sensual Johnny Depp on the cover, but the magazine felt flimsy in my hands.  I opened it up.  There were all the features, the various columns and frothy little bits.  But where were all the advertisements?  Where are the pages of Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren, Chloe and Burberry.  Where is BMW?  Tiffany?  Absolut? David Yurman?  They are all gone.  200 pages of advertising disappered.  I found the March issue lying around, all 332 pages of it.  The july issue is only 128 pages.   The luxury goods world has packed up its ad budgets into their Louis Vuitton trunks and put them storage.  Watch this space….

Can the new Music Industry Business Model work for News Media?

Last week at the All Things Digital: D conference hosted by Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, music mogel Irving Azoff talked about how the business model for the music industry today. Artists (and presumably their labels, managers, etc.) no longer make money off the release of their actual music. The money is made off their live shows, their merchandising, etc. The digitization of music and downloading has not killed the music business but it has reshaped it immensely. It is not about the product, but the packaging and distribution. Azoff stressed that music artists must be brands, with a capital B.

This is really interesting to think about in terms of the news content business. I wrote before about the power of the journalist brand and that the journalists who can really brand themselves and drive a following will be highly successful irregardless of the specific platform (newspaper, blog, broadcast outlet, etc.) that they live on. This means that charging for content by the word, the piece, the soundbite can be viable for the masses of content players, but for the journalist rock stars, they will make their fame and fortune based on the ancilliary revenues tied to their brand power.

So, if I go back to the All Things Digital event. This is a big money maker. It charges $4,500+/attendee for essentially a day and a half conference. There are over 600 people and a dozen sponsors who contribute as much as $250,000. It makes money for the WSJ, and it builds brand awareness for its stars: Kara and Walt. Or consider Fortune’s Pattie Sellers who is the star of its Most Powerful Women’s Summit. This event attracts the top 300 women in the world, it is tied into Fortune coverage, and has taken on almost a movement stature. It has made Pattie Sellers a strong brand with women. So if these are examples of the live show aspect of the music model. These events work, they are the rock concerts of business. They make money, they build a following, a fan base of sorts.
What next–merchandising?